It's A Risk
by starbuckmeggie
Summary: Sometimes you have to take a chance.
1. Chapter 1

I press a kiss to Monica's temple as she relaxes into me, my arms wrapped around her, our fingers twined, letting the bubble bath work its magic on us. We couldn't look more clichéd if we tried; we even have a CD of old romantic jazz standards playing in the background. But I couldn't care less—I've got the woman of my dreams with me.

"I'm glad we decided to try this again," she says to me, her voice dreamy.

"What? Sit together naked in a bathtub? I'm glad, too," I tease.

Instead of elbowing me like I expected, she turns her head and presses a kiss into my bicep. "No. I mean I'm glad we decided to try going away together again."

"One of my better ideas, if I say so myself."

We knew it was risky to try to sneak off together again—the last time we tried, not only was the entire weekend a bust, but Joey found out about us. This time, though, we planned a little better. A couple of weeks ago, Monica let it slip that she was going out of town with her "secret boyfriend," and all this week I've been pretending to stay late at work, claiming that I was probably going to have to be there all weekend. Even Joey looked like he bought it, and he was the one covering for me. I just really wanted us to be able to be together for a few days and not have to worry about sneaking around or making up another lame excuse. I wanted to be able to spend time with my girlfriend as her boyfriend and do all of the coupley things we've been denied the last few months.

"This feels perfect," she whispers to me. "I wish it could always be like this."

There's something in her voice that makes something in me alert. "What's wrong?"

Almost imperceptibly she starts, as if surprised that I can read her that well. "Nothing."

I place a kiss on her shoulder. "Monica, you don't have to hide anything from me."

"What makes you think something's wrong."

My girl's pretty clever—asking me a question so I'll forget my own. "Do you really think that after all these years I can't read your moods? Seriously?"

"Really, Chandler, it's nothing. I'm just..."

I wait patiently for her to get it out, knowing that she does really want to talk about it.

"I just sometimes wish we didn't have to hide so much. It's really hard being around our friends and constantly lying to them, when all I want to do is let the world know how crazy I am about you."

Monica sounds so sad that it nearly breaks my heart. I sigh heavily. "When we get back on Sunday, we'll tell everyone."

She turns to look at me, her eyes wide with surprise. "What?"

"Look, hiding this is bothering you a lot more than you're letting on, so we'll just come clean with everyone."

"No, Chandler…I appreciate it, but the time isn't right. I mean, look how freaked out Joey was. I don't think I can handle three other people reacting that way right now. And it's not that I don't like sneaking around with you, because I actually do. It's fun. Keeping our relationship to ourselves is really the best thing for us right now. I just wish there was a way we could do more of this, too."

"Then I'll make it happen."

Her voice is dripping with skepticism. "How?"

I tighten my grip around her, pressing my forehead to her temple. "New York is a big place, Monica; there are a lot of places we can go where we won't run into our friends. I can pick you up after you get off work and we'll just go out. We'll hold hands and walk down the street, ride the subway, take a bus, whatever. It doesn't matter to me where we go as long as we can be together."

She smiles, and I can tell she likes the idea. "But isn't that a little…chancy?"

"Don't care," I answer, and I realize that I really don't. "I want to give you the full boyfriend experience. Maybe we'll have to do it a little more subtly for a while, but I want to make sure you don't miss out on anything. We'll go to dinner, or go dancing, or see a show—"

"Dancing? This is not New York in the fifties."

"You know what I mean. We'll do stuff where we can be a couple. You have your secret boyfriend excuse you can use if need be, and I'm sure I'll come up with something. It's not like the six of us have to spend all hours of the day together. Being with you, making you happy…that's all I really want."

"That's not all you really want."

"Yeah, actually it is. That's all I've wanted for a very long time. I'm just glad that it seems to be me making you happy. So if you want to spend more time away from our friends and go do things together, we'll do it. It works for me—I'll get to spend more time with just you."

We're both silent for a while, and I can't help but wonder if I've said too much or gone too far. We've been together for a few months now and it seems like the lines we've thought were there are becoming much more blurry lately. It's hard to know what to say about how I feel without it being too much. Even worse is that I'm not always sure what's going to come out of my mouth when talking to her lately.

Finally, she shifts in my arms until we're face to face, her thighs straddling mine, and I suddenly am having a much more difficult time focusing on conversation.

"How long has my happiness been your priority?"

Yep…said too much. "Mon…"

"No seriously." She wraps her arms around my neck and presses her body against me provocatively and I'm lost. I have a hard enough time resisting her as it is, but when she holds her naked body against mine? Yeah, I'm done. "How long has it mattered to you?"

"A while now," I breathe, trying to focus enough to answer her. "Maybe too long. Probably before that whole jellyfish thing." I pull her face to mine and kiss her.

Only a few moments pass before she breaks away. "But what about Kathy?"

Who? My brain can't handle the shift in gears. "Huh? Kathy who?"

"Kathy. That woman you were crazy about—the one you liked enough to risk your friendship with Joey."

Oh. That Kathy. "Monica, can we please not talk about this? I really don't know how you'll feel about this path we're about to go down."

"Please?" I can see that's on the tip of her tongue to throw in, "It'll make me happy," but to her credit, she bites her tongue and waits. She probably already knows that I'll give In anyway.

"Look, it's not that big of a deal. You guys mean the world to me, and I'd do anything to make any of you happy." The silence on her end leads me to think that she doesn't believe me. "All right, yes, I loved Kathy, or at least I was pretty damn close to it, but if you had decided, in the middle of all that, that I was the one who you wanted, Kathy would have been gone. I know that's horrible, but that's how I felt." I avert my eyes from Monica's gaze, feeling a little ashamed. That was something I'd never really even confessed to myself.

"Hey." When I don't respond to her, she takes my chin in my hand and forces me to look at her. "Want to hear an embarrassing confession from me?"

"Please, God, yes."

She takes a deep breath and her chest rises appealingly, temporarily distracting me, before she lets out a long breath and says in nearly a whisper, "I wasn't too thrilled with you dating Kathy."

I couldn't have been more surprised if aliens popped out of the bathtub and started singing show tunes. I did not see that one coming. "Say what now?"

"I'm not saying it again."

"Fine, but…what?"

"I don't know. At the time I was feeling…I don't know what I was feeling. I had the occasional thought going through my head, even more so after you tried to harass me into being your girlfriend, and then there was this woman who, as nice as she seemed to be, was treating a couple of my friends very badly. But it certainly wasn't my place to tell you not to go out with her, especially not when you seemed to want to be with her so badly, so I just…waited. For the fall out. Because I knew you'd need a friend."

I have no words to respond to something like that, so I do what I consider the next best thing—I pull her back to me and kiss her for all I'm worth. It's the only way right now that I can express what this woman means to me. I'm pretty sure this means we've taken another step forward in our relationship, and really…I'm okay with where it's going.

*A/N…this moment became a lot longer than I ever intended. Stuff just came out of me. I don't know what's happening.


	2. Chapter 2

I have to hand it Chandler—he keeps his word. I told him I wanted to spend more time together in public as a couple, and he made it happen.

He was quick about it, too. A couple of days after our trip together, he was waiting for me after I got off a shift at work, ready to take me to dinner. He'd even brought clothes for me to change into.

Now, two or three times a week, we do that sort of thing. I've discovered that I genuinely don't care what it is that we do as long as I get to spend time with him. But that's probably how one our newest favorite clothed pastimes evolved; we ride the subway together.

I'm sure that's the sort of thing that sounds beyond strange to most people, but we discovered that, for all the years we've lived in the City, we've never really explored it. Our need to spend time together has helped us realize what a great place it is we live in, and how much it has to offer.

We usually just hop on the subway, pick a line, then get off at whatever stop sounds interesting at the moment. This has led to the occasional less-than-desirable location, but for the most part, it's been amazing. We stop at food carts, we discover old architecture and odd, out-of-the-way shops, we take pictures of ourselves in front of random places…we're a couple.

The picture thing is the one thing about all this that we nearly had a fight over, which seems silly in retrospect. He thought it was too much of a risk to keep photographic evidence of us being a couple, but I begged (actually begged) for him to understand—I explained that one day, we wouldn't be in hiding and we might like having this sort of memory. So for now, I have a stash of pictures hidden under a pair of shoes in a shoebox in my closet.

Today, though, he took me to the Bronx Zoo. I hadn't been to a zoo since I was little, and never to that particular one, but we had the absolute best time. Even though it was cold and near the end of the zoo's season (I guess the animals have to…hibernate? Maybe it's bad I don't know what they do with these creatures for almost 6 months a year), we just walked around, hand in hand, observing animals in their unnatural habitat. It was such a stereotypical New York thing to do that I half expected to hear a piano score in the background. Except maybe that these aren't the things that New Yorkers do; they're just things people think we do. But I even managed to pull Chandler into a photobooth at one point (though he's fighting me on the pictures less and less these days), so now we have a silly strip of pictures to add to my collection.

I sigh happily and lean my head against his shoulder as the subway jostles us back to Manhattan. "Thank you for today."

He wiggles his fingers against mine, making our joined hands do a little dance. "You're welcome. I had a great time."

"You're just full of surprises, you know that, Chandler?"

"Not really. I just stop by a tourism booth every once in a while to see what else is out there."

I throw my hands—and by extension his hand—in the air in mock-disgust. "Way to ruin the mystery, Chandler. And here I thought you were getting creative on me."

He grins as he leans over to kiss me, and I can't help but marvel in the fact that he's so comfortable with public displays of affection. For all of his insecurities and issues with relationships, he's remarkably at ease with just stopping to kiss me in the middle of the sidewalk whenever the mood strikes him, or taking me in his arms and twirling me around to the music of some street performance we stumble across.

"I'd do anything for you, Monica," he whispers against my lips before kissing me again, and I swear my heart flutters. The feelings I have for this man are so intense that I don't how to handle it most of the time. I've never felt anything like this before. The power of it all should scare me, but for the first time in my life, I feel complete. He's the other half of my heart. I so desperately want to tell him that I love him, but I think he has to be the one to say it first. If I tell him before he's ready to hear it, he'll bolt, and that would crush me. I can live with being in love with Chandler and not telling him; I can't live without him, though.

He pulls back and smiles at me again before leaning his head back against the window of the subway car. I lean my head against his shoulder once more, then smile when I feel him shift a bit so his head is resting against mine. In a little while, we'll get off at our usual stop, then head to the store to buy a few groceries as some sort of cover as to why we're out together. In a little while, we'll go back to pretending that we're just friends.

But for now, I look at our reflection in the window across from us—the two of us leaning against each other, my legs crossed nearly on top of his, Chandler's eyes closed and a happy little smile on his face, and the big toothy grin on my face.

I really like what I see.

*A/N…okay, so I've never been to the Bronx Zoo, but I know it's a thing. I even checked to make sure there was a subway line out to it. I have no idea if there was a picture booth there in the 90s, but it's probably a safe assumption. Also, this is the first time I've written them fully clothed! Yay for personal growth!


End file.
